


Wake-up Call

by fmo



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M, open to interpretation as friendship or romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 09:12:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fmo/pseuds/fmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier is awoken, un-brainwashed and taken under SHIELD's wing in 2011, but it's not like this fixes all the problems in Bucky's life. Two years later, Bucky gets a call to come in to SHIELD headquarters, fast as possible. Because Steve Rogers is alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wake-up Call

The Winter Soldier was brought in from the cold about two years ago. That’s what it says in the official files: turned by Agent Romanov, de-brainwashed and all. And it’s true that Bucky knows who he is now, however strange his old name sometimes feels to him, but it’s not like he’s really back to living a real life.

 

At SHIELD he’s more a myth than a water-cooler regular, and he sure as hell isn’t exploring the city's night life. Maybe the missions he’s sent on are a little more on the side of the angels, but that’s still his life: the call, the mission, the shot, the nothing, and repeat. It’s just that instead of being actually frozen between missions, he’s left to his own ends in his apartment that came pre-furnished with a plywood table.

 

Sometimes he sleeps through the day. Watches TV even though sometimes he feels like he doesn’t understand half of what’s going on. Reads a newspaper and lets it drop halfway through an article.

 

He goes to the place where Steve’s grave is, even though he’s been told they never found a body to put in it. He cries, and he has the right to do it and doesn’t care who sees. It just seems so wrong that he forgot about Steve for so long, and even worse that Steve is gone and he (Bucky, James, the Winter Soldier) is still around.

 

Steve has been gone _so_ long now. That’s the part that’s hard for Bucky to fathom. In his heart, Steve was there just a moment ago; his sketchbook and pencils should be in the drawer of his bedroom in London, the space he left in the world should still be visible. But there’s hardly anyone left alive who knew Steve, and everything connected with him has dissipated with time. Most of Steve’s stuff was sold, apparently. Collects high prices at auction, is kept in private collections. Like history. His sketchbooks, receipts he signed, letters.

 

Bucky considers the idea of stealing it all back. It’s Steve’s _stuff_.

 

A few of the Commandos are still alive, apparently. Peggy Carter in London. Bucky can’t face her, of all people. She’s old, but she’s had a real life. He’s still young, at least physically, but he’s been detached from the world for so long, starting with when Steve found him on that table in Italy. There was only so much saving Steve could do.

 

Sometimes Bucky lies on his bed in his apartment and thinks of bright days, of standing on an impossibly high cliff in the snow with Steve. Steve both the cynic and the optimist, making a wry joke. More than any super-soldier serum, what Steve had was the ability to make people believe in stuff like hope. 

 

It’s all jumbled up in Bucky’s head now, but if he closes his eyes he remembers the smell of the snow.

 

One night Bucky’s phone rings: his SHIELD Stark tech cell phone that nobody ever calls him on but Nick Fury and occasionally Coulson. It’s also the only phone he owns.

 

“Barnes,” Bucky says, answering it.

 

“We need to you come in to the New York headquarters immediately,” Fury says.

 

Bucky sits up. “A mission, sir?”

 

“Not quite,” Fury says. “We need you right away. A car will pick you up in four minutes.” Then Fury hangs up, because he’s not a man of extraneous words.

 

There’s a tingle down the back of Bucky’s neck and he’s not sure if that’s good or bad. Fury almost sounded unsettled, and nothing unsettles Fury. Fury also didn’t say what to bring, so Bucky just leaves on his blending-in-with-the-civilians clothes and heads out to the curb. The apartment they got him was, conveniently for them, not far from SHIELD headquarters. And, honestly, Bucky doesn’t know if he could bear to go back to Brooklyn anyway.

 

"A car" turns out to be, unexpectedly, Coulson behind the wheel of a cop car; Coulson seems to have caught Fury’s slightly-ruffled air too. Normally Bucky kind of hates Coulson because: Coulson is a Captain America fanboy. Firstly, Coulson’s mere presence is always a reminder of Steve, and secondly Bucky hates the people who love the _idea_ of Steve. They seem to think that they have some kind of ownership over Steve, but they don’t know him. They love him for all the wrong reasons; if they’d really known Steve they’d really know what was special about him, what made people like the Commandos follow him and love him back then. That's what nobody understands any more.

 

But today Coulson apparently doesn’t have time to get a very secret oh-my-god-it’s-bucky-barnes glint in his eye like he normally does; as soon as Bucky shuts the car door, Coulson slams his foot on the gas pedal and turns the siren on to part the traffic.

 

“Isn’t this kind of illegal,” Bucky says, mostly just to needle Coulson. He doesn’t bother with the seatbelt, so Coulson’s speed-limit-destroying turns throw him around in the back seat.

 

“We have authorization,” Coulson says evenly. “This isn’t a combat mission. We need your help with another operative. An . . . individual.”

 

“What, you picked me to give ‘em a hug?” The Winter Soldier has fairly specific talents, so Bucky can’t figure why he was called out if it wasn’t for sniping or surveillance.

 

“Hopefully, yes,” Coulson says, deadpan. “You’re aware that the version of the super-soldier serum you received helped you survive being frozen, both in the Alps and afterwards.”

 

 _Afterwards_. Tactful. “Yeah.”

 

“A scientific expedition in the Arctic just made a discovery pertinent to you.”

 

It only takes Bucky a moment to make the leap, but when he does he can barely get the words out. “Are you telling me Steve’s alive?”

 

“Alive and currently running amok in the city,” Coulson says.

 

“ _What?”_

 

Coulson explains about the it’s-still-the-1940s show they put on for Steve, which—this is exactly the problem. Treating Steve like he’s stupid? They forgot that Steve’s mind was enhanced along with his body, and Steve was no slouch to start with.

 

Bucky gives voice to these thoughts. He doesn’t voice the accompanying thought, which is to ask why he wasn’t brought in earlier. He wonders when they were _going_ to tell him that Steve was alive. _If_ they were going to tell him, or if they didn’t want the Winter Soldier associated with their Captain America.

 

Coulson makes another sharp turn at a speed more suited to a highway and then they’re in Times Square, behind a bunch of stopped cars, including SHIELD sedans encircling some kind of event. Probably Steve, then.

 

As soon as the car stops, Bucky jumps out and shoves through the cops and bystanders. And there is Nick Fury, and with his back to Bucky is a man whose form Bucky knows all too well. Blond hair, wearing a white undershirt, with impossibly wide shoulders narrowing down to a small waist. The set of this man’s shoulders, though, and the way he carries the weight of his body, like someone who doesn't even realize that all that strength could be a threat—it’s all Steve.

 

It’s Steve. He doesn’t look like he aged a day.

 

“Steve!” Bucky calls, even though it looks like Steve and Fury are having a conversation.

 

Steve spins around, and—

 

He looks just the same. But. When he first turns, he looks heartbroken. Then Steve sees Bucky and it’s like a sunrise all over Steve: suddenly Steve is standing a little straighter, his face is all dawning hope. It’s been a long, long time since anyone looked at Bucky like that. In fact, the last person who did—the only person who ever did—was Steve.

 

Bucky can’t quite imagine what Steve is seeing, because he knows he doesn’t look like the Sergeant Barnes who fell off a train long ago, but Steve knows him. “ _Bucky?”_ Steve says, eyes wide. There’s a little doubt there, because of the dumb fake 1940s trick they just played on him, but mostly there's shock.

 

“What did you do?” Bucky says, gesturing to the chaos around them. It’s the best quip he can come up with.

 

“Oh my god,” Steve says, almost running over to Bucky. “How did—I—“  His gaze tracks over Bucky’s face, over the rest of him too. Bucky’s glad he wore his gloves like he usually does, because he doesn’t want to get to explaining that part.

 

“Long story,” Bucky says. “Short version, back in that Hydra base they were testing a version of the super-soldier serum on me. It’s not as good as yours, but you’re not the only one who took a nap in some ice.” And Steve really does look just like Bucky's last memories of him, except better because he's real.

 

"Oh my god, Bucky." Steve just grabs on to Bucky, a hug with no dignity, and Bucky hugs him back. They were never very good at talking, but for the first time since he was himself again Bucky is so, so glad to be in New York. Because Steve just lost, what, seventy years? This whole world is going to be new to him, but Bucky is here. Can be here, for Steve.

 

The Winter Soldier's instincts are telling him that somewhere a few feet away Nick Fury is looking smug and the cops are trying to hold people back and Coulson is silently dying but for once Bucky doesn't begrudge him that, because this is Bucky's best day in a long time, maybe forever.

 

They part and Bucky puts his hand on Steve's back and says, "C'mon, let's get inside." There's a little too much gawking going on, and they are in the middle of the street.

 

Steve comes along by Bucky's side, just like always. For him, it's only been a few days since Bucky fell. "You know these people?"

 

"It's a  _long_ story."

 

"I got time," Steve says. 

 

Bucky can't say anything to that for a second, because it's true.

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!
> 
> Come say hi to me at fmowrites.tumblr.com, and if you found this fic through a rec, please tell me! I love to hear about being recced.


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